Hanging Man: Maintaining the Bio Wall at U. of Lethbridge

(University of Lethbridge image)

Of all the people I meet at colleges, I tend to enjoy talking to the facilities guys the most. These people can often give you a detailed description of the guts of an old boiler, discuss the energy market in their region, and talk sensibly — even eloquently — about sustainability issues. They have to be Renaissance men and women, because they never know what task they might have to take on, what new building feature they might have to maintain.

And the picture here pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it? This is Tyler Falwell, a facilities-staff member at the University of Lethbridge, in Alberta, Canada, maintaining a 40-foot-high “bio wall” in an environmental-science building. Bio walls have common house plants embedded in a porous material attached to a vertical surface; water is pumped up to the top and trickles down to feed the plants. Bio walls, experts say, can clean indoor air.

When the walls need maintenance, someone may have to get into a harness and climb up. In this case, the facilities crew worked with the climbing-wall staff in the sports-and-recreation department to get Mr. Falwell up into the air to pull out dead plants and replace them with new ones. Just a day at work for a facilities guy.